JPH0236884B2 - - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention relates to a traffic management device for obtaining information regarding the operating status of a motor vehicle.

As the price of fuel refined from petroleum resources rises, the proportion of fuel costs in the operating costs of commercial vehicles equipped with diesel engines is increasing.For example, in the case of route trucks, the proportion of fuel costs is increasing. has reached approximately 80%. Under these circumstances, automobile manufacturers are making various improvements to engines and vehicles to improve fuel efficiency. However, if the operation manager does not perform appropriate maintenance, or if the driver does not take care to drive in a way that improves fuel efficiency, fuel efficiency will deteriorate and costs will increase.

In view of these problems, traffic control devices have been proposed especially for commercial vehicles. The purpose of this device is to provide the driver with data to enable economical driving, and to provide the operation manager with data to manage economical driving. Furthermore, information regarding the timing of maintenance can also be provided. This device uses a microcomputer to process various detected values such as the engine rotation speed detected by the sensor, and prints out the data using an output device such as a printer. It's summery. These conventional operation control devices calculate fuel consumption, the frequency of use in each rotational speed range of the engine, and the distribution of the frequency of use of each stage of the transmission. There is.

However, such conventional vehicle operation control devices do not detect anything such as the number of times the driver operates the brake pedal or the frequency of sudden braking in which the driver suddenly depresses the brake pedal. Therefore, there was a drawback that the driving condition could not be grasped with sufficient accuracy. Generally, in order to reduce fuel consumption, it is preferable to drive at a constant vehicle speed and avoid sudden braking and acceleration as much as possible. It is known that there is a difference of more than 30% in fuel efficiency between driving at a constant vehicle speed and driving in waves where the accelerator and brake pedals are operated more than necessary. Therefore, from this point of view as well, it can be said that accurately obtaining information regarding the usage status of the brakes is an extremely important function for the operation control device.

JP-A-52-71279 discloses that a spherical body is rotatably inserted into a cylindrical hole formed in a block, and a light emitting element and An acceleration detection device is installed with a light receiving element, and a damper liquid that buffers the movement of the spherical body is sealed in the hole.The acceleration in the negative direction that occurs during braking is detected, and the detected output is sent to a power amplifier. A device is disclosed in which the frequency of sudden braking is recorded and displayed by amplifying the signal and supplying the signal to a counter.

According to such a device, it is necessary to use an acceleration sensor with a special structure as described above, and also to fixedly arrange this acceleration sensor at a predetermined angle with respect to the floor surface of the vehicle body. A structural acceleration sensor will be required. Moreover, since sudden braking is detected based on the acceleration acting on a spherical body placed inside this acceleration sensor, the reliability of sudden braking detection is low, and it is not always possible to obtain accurate information. The drawback was that I couldn't do it.

The present invention has been made in view of the above-mentioned problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a vehicle operation control device that can accurately obtain information regarding the usage status of the vehicle's brakes. It is.

The present invention provides a traffic control device for obtaining information regarding the operating state of a vehicle, which includes a means for detecting that a brake operation is performed, a means for detecting a vehicle speed, and a means for calculating a rate of change in vehicle speed during a brake operation. a calculating means for determining whether the rate of change in vehicle speed exceeds a predetermined value; and a determining means for determining whether the rate of change in vehicle speed exceeds a predetermined value is regarded as a sudden braking operation and counts the number of times the brake is applied. In particular, by detecting the vehicle speed and calculating the vehicle speed, sudden braking operation can be accurately detected.

The present invention will be explained below with reference to an illustrated embodiment.
FIG. 1 shows an engine of a truck equipped with a traffic control device according to this embodiment. This engine 1 is composed of a diesel engine, and a fuel injection pump 2 is attached to the side of the engine. There is. The fuel injection pump 2 is operated by the gear 3.
It is designed to be driven via timer 4,
Fuel is sequentially supplied to each cylinder of the engine 1 at a predetermined timing. The fuel injection pump 2 is provided with a mechanical governor 5, and the control rack is moved via the governor 5 according to the amount of rotation of the load lever 6, so that the fuel injection pump 2 can control the amount of fuel supplied at one time. The amount of supply is now controlled. The load lever 6 is connected to an accelerator pedal (not shown) via a wire cable 7. Also, on the back side of this engine 1 is a flywheel housing 8.
A flywheel and a clutch are housed in the housing 8. A transmission 9 is attached to the rear side of the housing 8, and is configured to perform on/off transmission of torque from the engine 1 to the propeller shaft.

Next, we will discuss the operation control device installed in the vehicle equipped with this engine 1. This operation control device is composed of a microcomputer 10, and this microcomputer 10 has an input port 11 and an output port 12. Each is equipped with one. The input port 11 is attached to the front side of the engine 1 and connected to a rotation detection sensor 13 that detects the rotation speed of the engine 1.
Note that the rotation detection sensor is not necessarily installed on the front side of the engine 1; for example, the rotation detection sensor is installed on the N of the alternator.
It may also be attached to the terminal or the ring gear part of the flywheel. In addition, input port 11
is connected to a load sensor 14 that detects the amount of rotation of the load lever 6 of the mechanical governor 5. Note that this load sensor 14 is composed of a potentiometer. Furthermore, the output of a vehicle speed sensor 15 provided on the output side of the transmission 9 is supplied to the microcomputer 10 via an input port 11. Further, the input port 11 is connected to a brake switch 16 and a clutch switch 17 that detect depression of a brake pedal 16 and a clutch pedal 17, respectively. Further, a pair of fuel gauges 18 and 19 are connected to the input port 11. The fuel gauge 18 measures the amount of fuel supplied to the fuel injection pump 2, and the fuel gauge 19 measures the amount of fuel supplied to the fuel injection pump 2. The amount of fuel returned from the injection pump 2 is measured. Further, the output port 12 of the microcomputer 10 constituting the above-mentioned operation management device is connected to a printer 20, and is configured to print out various data using the printer 20.

Next, the operation of the vehicle operation management device having the above configuration will be explained. This operation control device measures the amount of fuel used using a pair of fuel gauges 18 and 19, calculates the fuel consumption by calculating the amount of fuel used by a microcomputer 10, and prints out the fuel consumption using a printer 20. That's what I do. Further, according to this operation control device, the rotation speed of the engine 1 is measured by the rotation detection sensor 13 provided on the front side of the engine 1, and this value is arithmetic processed by the computer 10.
Various information regarding the rotation speed of the engine 1 is obtained. Further, this traffic control device reads the vehicle speed using a vehicle speed sensor 15, and processes the data obtained by this sensor 15 using the computer 10, thereby obtaining various information regarding the vehicle speed. .

Furthermore, the vehicle operation control device is designed to accurately obtain information regarding the usage status of the brakes. This operation will be explained based on the flowchart shown in FIG. 2. First, the microcomputer 10 reads the output of the brake switch 16 through the input port 11. In other words, when the brake pedal is depressed, this switch 16
will close and produce its output. Therefore, this output will be supplied to the microcomputer 10. When it is detected that the brake pedal is depressed by switching the brake switch 16, the microcomputer 10 immediately reads information regarding the vehicle speed from the vehicle speed sensor 15.
Note that this vehicle speed reading is performed twice with a predetermined time interval, and from the difference in these vehicle speeds and the time between them, the rate of change in vehicle speed, that is, dv/dt, is calculated. It is determined whether the absolute value is larger than a predetermined value k.

As shown by the solid line in Fig. 3, when the brake pedal is suddenly depressed to brake the vehicle suddenly, the change in vehicle speed with respect to time decreases rapidly, so in this case, the above dv/dt The absolute value of increases. Therefore, if this value exceeds a predetermined value, it is determined that a sudden braking has occurred, and the number of times of sudden braking is counted up. On the other hand, as shown by the dotted line in FIG. 3, when the brake pedal is depressed slowly, the change in vehicle speed with respect to time becomes smaller. Therefore, when the absolute value of dv/dt is smaller than k, the number of normal brakes is counted up. Therefore, based on the flowchart shown in FIG. 2, the microcomputer 10 counts the number of sudden brakings and the number of normal brakings. The results obtained in this way are
It is designed to be printed by a printer 20 shown in FIG. Since the number of times of sudden braking and the number of times of normal braking are measured, the ratio of the number of times of sudden braking to the total number of times of braking can be simultaneously calculated and printed out by the printer 20.

As described above, according to the vehicle operation control device according to the present embodiment, it is possible to count the number of sudden brakes in which the rate of change in vehicle speed when the brake pedal is depressed exceeds a predetermined value. Moreover, it becomes possible to compare this number of times with the number of normal brakes, or it becomes possible to calculate and output the number of sudden brakes relative to the total number of brakes. Therefore, with such data, it is possible to reliably understand whether or not the driver is trying to drive fuel-efficiently, and based on such data, guidance on fuel-efficient driving can be given to the driver. becomes possible. Furthermore, with such information regarding brakes, it becomes possible to prevent undulating driving by providing more economical driving guidance to drivers. This makes it possible to improve durability.

Next, a modification of the above embodiment is shown in FIGS. 4 and 5.
This will be explained with reference to the diagram. In the above embodiment, it is determined whether or not there is a sudden brake depending on whether the rate of change in vehicle speed when the brake pedal is depressed exceeds a certain value, but this modification example As shown in the flowchart shown in FIG. 4, the rate of change in vehicle speed when the brake pedal is depressed is differentiated step by step, and the frequency of each case is calculated.

To explain this operation in more detail, when the microcomputer 10 detects that the switch 16 is closed and the brake pedal is depressed, the microcomputer 10 reads the vehicle speed using the vehicle speed sensor 15 and detects the change in vehicle speed. Calculate percentages. Then, a threshold value is set for the rate of change in vehicle speed every 5 km/h, and it is determined whether or not the rate of change in vehicle speed exceeds that value. Based on the frequency of 5 km/h, a table regarding the brake distribution as shown in FIG. 5 is printed out using the printer 20. Therefore, by directly looking at the graph shown in Figure 5, it is possible to know the usage status of the brake more reliably, and it is possible to accurately obtain information on whether the brake is being used appropriately. become able to.

As described above, the present invention calculates the rate of change in vehicle speed when a braking operation is performed, and if the rate exceeds a predetermined value, it is determined as a sudden braking and the number of times the brake is applied is counted. This is how it was done. Therefore, according to the present invention, it is possible to more accurately know the usage status of the brakes when the car is in operation, and based on this data regarding the usage status of the brakes, the driver can be advised of measures to improve fuel efficiency. This makes it possible to provide guidance, thereby making it possible to further reduce fuel consumption. In addition, by improving driving methods based on such data, it becomes possible to prevent undulating driving, particularly to protect functional parts, and to extend the life of the vehicle.

Further, according to the present invention, a sudden braking operation is detected by detecting the vehicle speed and calculating it. Therefore, there is no need for an acceleration sensor with a special structure, and it becomes possible to accurately detect and count the number of sudden braking operations.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

Fig. 1 is a block diagram showing a vehicle operation control device according to an embodiment of the present invention, Fig. 2 is a flowchart for obtaining data on brake usage status by this operation control device, and Fig. 3 is a sudden brake. 4 is a flowchart showing the operation according to the modified example, and FIG. 5 is a graph showing an example of data obtained by this modified example. be. In addition, in the symbols used in the drawings, 1...diesel engine, 2...fuel injection pump, 9...transmission, 10...microcomputer, 13
...Engine rotation detection sensor, 14...Load sensor (potentiometer), 15...Vehicle speed sensor, 1
6... Brake switch, 18... Fuel gauge (supply side),
19... Fuel gauge (return side), 20... Printer.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a traffic management device for obtaining information regarding the operational status of a vehicle, means for detecting that a brake operation has been performed, means for detecting vehicle speed, and calculation means for calculating the rate of change in vehicle speed during brake operation. a determining means for determining whether the rate of change in vehicle speed exceeds a predetermined value; and a counting means for counting the number of sudden braking operations when the rate of change in vehicle speed exceeds a predetermined value. An automobile operation control device characterized in that it is provided with a.